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One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

cnn.com

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Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#101

Post by ericmay »

colechristensen wrote: post #89
ecshafer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the more esoteric conspiracy theories are hard to debunk. Lets take the earth if round, prove it. You can bring up many cases, sails disappearing behind the horizon, goemetry, etc. but actually doing these measurements and calculations cold is pretty hard. And whenever you bring up a fact, they will dismiss it out of hand. Tectonic plates, I believe they exist, I have seen the evidence in books. But I doubt I…

You don't particularly need calculations, just have friends around the world or even a couple hundred miles away, get on a video call to prove the world is round. Whatever your pet theory of how the sun moves across the "flat" earth can be contradicted with a couple of facetime calls.

I’ll do you one better, you shouldn’t even spend any time engaging in a debate with people who believe the earth is flat because they don’t want to change their mind.

It doesn’t really matter if the earth is flat or not, for them it’s about being part of a community of people who believe in something that society tells them is wrong. There is no changing minds besides the 1 in a million you hear about and so all the calculations you could do would never work, sadly.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#102

Post by gloryjulio »

senderista wrote: post #35
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #29

There are primary sources. There are archeological sites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianling_Mausoleum There are also histories written just after the Tang Dynasty had fallen. It was considered good form for a new dynasty to write a historical review of the previous one, and there are two retrospectives on Tang, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Book_of_Tang And there is ironclad evidence from foreign sourc…

The Shang dynasty is also kind of a propaganda nightmare, with all the archeological evidence for mass human sacrifice.

Not exactly an issue though. Because the following Dynasty Zhou was portrayed as a protagonist, which rebelled against Shang and abolished human sacrifice and established the right Chinese civilization. And all the following dynasties are claiming that Zhou was the good old days and they are following Zhou's tradition.

Shang being an villain fits this narrative.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#103

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nl wrote: post #92
1-more wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko) which I thought was the same as this but actually compresses a whole lot more time into less than 1000 years and does word magic to imply that King Solomon = Suleiman the Magnificent.

Yes I was going to point to the Fomenko chonology too. I believe that has adherents in some minor Russian nationalist circles: > In September 2020, major Russian politician and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Glazyev publicly proposed Fomenko's New Chronology as a "reliable support for the formation of modern ideology that consolidates Russian society" And related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

"A reliable support for the formation of modern ideology"? That pretty much screams that any connection with the truth is... optional. It's not being considered on grounds of truth, but on grounds of being good for ideology.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#105

Post by HeavenFox »

bryan0 wrote: post #60
KwisatzHaderack wrote: post #53

I think the bigger point here is that even the CCP, with it’s heavy-handed totalitarian controls on the Chinese web, isn’t able to entirely filter out misinformation.

Not sure why you're getting down voted but this does seem like the key point. There obviously is a major challenge in avoiding conspiratorial nonsense in societies with strong freedom of speech, but in this example we have China facing something similar.

Note the reason of this conspiracy: the founder of Tang dynasty is not of pure Han Chinese ethnicity. In the grand scheme, this is just part of the rise of Han nationalism in recent years, which had its roots in the nationalism rhetorics adopted by the Chinese state under Xi.

I'm sure you can see the parallels of this in the United States and Europe.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#106

Post by geokon »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #69
SllX wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even popular in Japan, with e.g. The Apothecary Diaries and similar fare. Notably the Tang Dynasty in China was concurrent with the Taika Reforms, Nara period & beginning of the Heian period in Japan.

And thus for a very long time, and even today to some extent, the Japanese (or their cultural theorists at any rate!) have viewed themselves as the inheritors of "true" Ancient Chinese culture -- unsullied by Mongol/Manchu/Communist influence. There's some truth to this. The Japanese preserved certain Tang Dynasty customs which were lost to China, and they have some of the best collections of Tang-era artifacts. This…

In my experience the Chinese very much think this as well. Though it can be framed in a more derogatory way as "derivative" or "they just copied us"

I'd argue its difficult to find major aspects of Japanese culture that don't trace back to ancient China (maybe the language, eating raw food and sumo)

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#107

Post by macintux »

MBCook wrote: post #91
doginasuit wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is healthy for society in the long run to have pockets of divergent belief. Most of the time it is groundless and fades away. Every so often it gains traction. If it is based in reality, we gain a better understanding. If it is misleading, it vitalizes a competing and more correct understanding. The more interesting phenomenon is that we are able to agree on anything at all, it's not exactly our strongest in…

How could it be healthy to not even agree on the most basic facts of history like whether hundreds of years actually happened or the shape of the earth?

That’s why I’ve lost much of my optimism regarding U.S. politics.

It’s fine, and healthy, to disagree on how best to deal with the world as it exists, but if we can’t agree on reality itself, compromise and progress are so much more challenging.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#108

Post by gmerc »

doginasuit wrote: post #36
graemep wrote: post #11

Its a Chinese equivalent of the phantom time theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory Its just as silly as phantom time and covers almost exactly the same period. The motive is possibly racist which makes it more sinister.

Maybe it is healthy for society in the long run to have pockets of divergent belief. Most of the time it is groundless and fades away. Every so often it gains traction. If it is based in reality, we gain a better understanding. If it is misleading, it vitalizes a competing and more correct understanding. The more interesting phenomenon is that we are able to agree on anything at all, it's not exactly our strongest in…

One look at what’s happening with vaccines and you’re disabused of healthy. It’s not. it’s insanity

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#109

Post by nl »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #103
nl wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I was going to point to the Fomenko chonology too. I believe that has adherents in some minor Russian nationalist circles: > In September 2020, major Russian politician and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Glazyev publicly proposed Fomenko's New Chronology as a "reliable support for the formation of modern ideology that consolidates Russian society" And related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

"A reliable support for the formation of modern ideology"? That pretty much screams that any connection with the truth is... optional. It's not being considered on grounds of truth, but on grounds of being good for ideology.

Well... yes.

I mean it's a nationalist ideology - any connection with reality is coincidental.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#110

Post by conmod278 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #29

There are primary sources. There are archeological sites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianling_Mausoleum There are also histories written just after the Tang Dynasty had fallen. It was considered good form for a new dynasty to write a historical review of the previous one, and there are two retrospectives on Tang, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Book_of_Tang And there is ironclad evidence from foreign sourc…

There is a similar theory heavily contested in Indian History that the Vedic period never existed.
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